In Greek mythology, the Sphinx sat outside of Thebes and asked this riddle of all travelers who passed by.
If the traveler failed to solve the riddle, then the Sphinx killed him.
And if the traveler answered the riddle correctly, then the Sphinx would destroy herself.
__________________________________
The riddle:
What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?
__________________________________
The Answer is Democracy.
In the beginning it is an infant crawling of all four legs.
In maturity is able to stand on its own two legs.
And in the end, limps along with help of a cane.
Arab Democracy, newly born in 2011 is learning to crawl.
There will be a lot of falls, tantrums, and bawling.
Egypt is in the Terrible Twos.
The French Revolution continued for over 30 years until the death of Napoleon.
NO revolution and transition to stability is resolved overnight.
Change occurs one death at a time.
And it will take generations.
__________________________________
Look at a baby:
Sometime in her lifetime Egypt--in the best case scenario--will arrive at a stable, tolerant, just and democratic government.
In a bad case scenario, imagine a few more centuries of a 7th Century Theocracy.
In the absolute worse case, peace will arrive in a few hours in the Post Acoplaypse Nuclear Winter.
Iran is inching the Mideast closer to the last possilbility.
___________________________________
The Answer is Democracy. Answer correctly or all will be anihilated.

The praise was for the opportunity created to attempt to make democracy work in Egypt - not because there was any certainty that the Egyptians could pull it off. Appears maybe they can't, but the attempt was mandatory.

Imperfect democracy is still a democracy. One could also say that arab spring is an opportunity to make Plato's philosopher-king work, and it appears it didn't quite work, so maybe give Morsi some more time (and more dollar will be good, too)? :-).

Or maybe the 21st century will teach us that not all democracies are crated equal, and that perhaps, under certain conditions, non-democracies are preferable. Gadhafi and the CCCP weren't all bad re economic development. Maybe Morsi can do evem better.